Number Twenty Seven
by Scarabbug
Summary: It was a day like any other day in the InBetween, and those two words were how it started for Harbinger Number Twenty Seven. Features character death… sort of. Set preseries. One shot.


**This is heavily based on a YuGiOh fic by Scribbler, in fact a few lines near the end, in particular, take _very_ strong influence from Scribbler. I'm just removing the crossover element. So then. All YuGiOh fans are strongly advised to go read Scribblers work. In particular her Terry Pratchett crossover and marvel a little at the talent. (Seems that's all I've been capable of doing lately is adapting other peoples ideas as mine, so much for originality, huh?) All the characters featured are disclaimed in my profile as is everything else I post on here. The original creator possesses the right to demand the removal of this fic at any time. **

**Anyway, this isn't meant to be Real Person fic (which is illegal on this site, anyway) but the more I worked at it the more it seemed to turn out that way, though it really isn't supposed to do**. **I respect this guy too much to screw with his identity too much (well, the _real_ one's identity, anyway. His ficitonal version, however, is too sweet and easy to mess with). Just think of this as transportation between two different fictions -one of them AU- and I think we'll be okay. **

**That said I'm looking for a better _title_ for this, too, if anyone can think of one…

* * *

**

**_"To the praying mother and the worried father let your children go. _****_If they come back they'll come home stronger and if they don't you'll know."_**

_-Good Charlotte,_ The River _Lyrics._

**

* * *

**

Number Twenty Seven.

'Oh… Damn.'

It was a day like any other day in the In-Between, and those two words were how it started for Harbinger Number Twenty Seven.

A slight smile tweaked her lips at the sight of the man standing before her. They didn't usually catch on quite as quickly as this one had. 'Yes, you'd probably be surprised by how often I hear that one. The other explicates are tossed around as well, of course but for some reason "damn" seems to be the most popular. That and "_For god's sakes, wake up this really isn't funny_". If you'd care to get down to business…?'

Usually best to move into things quickly. The less time this took, the less painful the process was for everyone involves. He was still standing in the doorway after it had spat him unceremoniously in her direction. The pencils shifted about on her desk of their own accord and she did her best to ignore them. They had a tendency to whisper. She stood up, and walked around her desk holding the papers in her hand.

'I don't… I don't believe this.'

She smiled the plastered smile of a shopping assistant, waving the papers in front of his face. 'Well, you could always try to anyway. It'll be a lot easier for both of us if you do. Okay what do we have here… your front cover details all seem to be in order. Date of birth… accurate. Next of Kin… also accurate, I don't really have to ask you about any of that so you'll be glad to hear this should be fairly quick and hopefully painless.'

'You don't understand; this isn't…' he cuts off, staring at her for another long moment while she waits, expectantly, for him to regain control of his senses. 'Oh, good _god_, I… What… what is that, exactly?' he asked her.

'This? Oh this would be your Substance Reports. Be pleased with yourself, by the way, your existence has apparently been very… eventful.'

'…Eventful?'

'Well, if you've done it in your life, the odds are I have it written right here,' she waved the papers in front of his face.

'What? In _that_ little file?'

Clearly he had no idea of the concept of "little". She was also starting to think there was an echo in here. Still, she reminded herself, that wasn't at all uncommon. 'Well, no, not _just_ thisone, obviously. You know you have quite a substantial file when it comes to Near-Death experiences…' She paused, suddenly remembering her etiquette. Darn, she always forgot those details. No wonder she had nearly failed her empathy examination. 'Would you like a chair?'

'…Yes.'

She took the liberty of sitting down herself on a seat which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The notes and files in her hand quivered in anticipation as she did so. They were, she noticed, also a great deal heavier than most people were.

'So. Do you remember exactly what you were doing at the time?'

'I was…' he paused for a moment, seeming to have to think about it. 'I was in the middle of a _shooting_… A scene, shooting a _scene_, not…'

'Yes, I get the picture. Okay, that's understandable given your current line of work, but you're going to have to explain a few things to me here. You know, for formalities sakes.'

'But you don't understand, this is… this is _not_ a good time.'

He'd probably be amazed by how often she'd heard that one, too. On this occasion, she doesn't mention it. 'I know. It never is.' It was the closest emotive statement she could get to sympathy. She really has been doing this for far too long. 'But the point still stands. Take a deep breath. Start at the beginning.'

He takes the deep breath alright, but he doesn't continue with any kind of viable explanation. He's taking it quite well, though, considering how many gibbering wrecks she tends to get in this department. This is, after all, where they deal with the Premature Burials.

'This… this really makes no sense at all.'

'Really?' She asked, with vague interest and took the opportunity to meet his eyes for a second time. Slightly older than middle aged, certainly, but not nearly old enough to be here of the most typical natural causes, nor did he look all that much like the age his papers claimed to be. She had to rub out a couple of bits on nationality (clearly he wasn't causican and she had no idea how the files had managed to make such an obvious mix up) but otherwise it all looked pretty much in order. An interesting case, if the notes he had were anything to go by, too.

'…I have leapt from the top of a twenty story shopping centre… road-surfed along the sides of a double decker bus, crashed _several_ vehicles, broken through more glass windows than…' a pause, he searched for the right simile. 'Than a riot in the east end of California.'

'I suppose you've been in a riot in the East End of California, too?' She only vaguely glanced at the paper in her hands and even without doing that, she'd probably have known that her comment –however sarcastically put– was right. 'Hm. Well. A few similar instances at least.'

'This… this isn't a dream, is it? I want it to be, but…'

'No, sir, it's definitely not a dream. If it _were_ I would've spared us both the current scenario and helped to wake you up, by now.'

He smiled weakly. 'I thought as much.'

'Hm. By the way, you still have some shards of glass in your pocket; I'd take them out before you cut yourself. Contrary to popular belief, you _can_ still bleed here, if only metaphorically.'

'How do you know what's in my—' he pauses. 'Why do I _have_ anything in my pockets at all?'

'Well certain people are entitled to bring something with them when they get here, to represent the life they left behind. Apparently the omnipotence must have thought the broken glass suited you.'

'Oh…' his voice is as close to sarcastic as his current somewhat irritated mental state will allow. He holds the shard of chipped glass in his hand up towards the lampshade, letting the dim light prism across his fingers. 'Wonderful. I am dead and I was entitled to bring the object of my death with me.'

'Well to be honest I think it was more the force of the impact that got to you.'

He looked up at her firmly, now and she decided he was most definitely cute. Particularly whilst confused. 'Who _are_ you, anyhow, are… are you… you know… _Him_? I mean Her? _It_?'

She shook her head. 'Something like that, I guess. But my name isn't important; you don't need to know it. Yes, yes, that's not an awfully original thing to say, I know, but that's what my contract says to tell you when you ask.'

He swallowed. 'You're _Death_, aren't you?'

She sighed. So much for mysterious subtlety. All these humans were getting far too demanding, what with the turn of the century and all. 'Yes. And if you'd rather call me that then by all means, do. Though I have to say the cape and scythe thing got _very_ old after the first two centuries. As did having to _point out _how the cape and scythe got old after a couple of centuries… that was a joke,' she added on the end, just in case he hadn't got it, but the look on his face made it quite clear that he ad gotten it and honestly just didn't care. 'Ah well, I'm not meant to be known for my sense of humour, you know? So at any rate, would you care to continue?'

He didn't say anything to that, but that was okay, really. The strange, disturbed silences were rather common, too. 'Are you okay? Well I mean, considering the circumstances, anyhow? We offer drinks; you know… You _are_ fully sure of why and how you're here, aren't you?'

'Don't get me wrong,' he said, sighing. 'I suppose I never expected to…'

'Die of old age? I don't blame you, given the looks of your lifestyle. Still, congratulations. If you hadn't gotten on the wrong side of that Ferrari, you actually probably _would_ have.'

And the man stared at her quite firmly, as if he found that very concept difficult to believe.

'It's so strange, the hand fate deals you people,' she went on, shrugging slightly. 'On the one hand you have the people who throw themselves at it every opportunity they get, like someone out of an overdone action movie –no offence intended, of course– and yet find themselves living to the grand old age of fifty-five. And then on the other, there are more small children dying in car accidents every hour than there are hurricanes in the mid-Atlantic. And I should know, I have to count. Literally.'

He seemed slightly disturbed by this statement. 'That's so many…'

'Yeah, and we're not exactly registered with any kind of tally counter here. I just have to _feel_ them all,' she leans forwards slightly while tapping the side of her head, already fully aware that she was revealing perhaps more than she originally would with anyone. 'Right in _here_. I felt _you_ go and I felt all of your family before you. And I'll also see all those who come after. There are many more of them. More than you could ever count.'

'Really? That sounds…'

'Scary?' she said, trying to provide some suggestions. 'Terrible? Haunting? As disturbing as You-Know-Where?'

'Difficult,' however, was the word he came out with.

'Would you believe me if I told you we got used to it?' He shook his head, slightly. 'Good. I was never any good at lying, anyway.' she redirected her attention back at the files in her hand. 'Anyway its okay if you don't want to talk about it, only some people find it helps the moving on process, you know? I have everything written here, really.' Her eyes flickered in interest across a few pages. 'Hm, what d'you know, it even says here that you _sang_ quite a bit.'

'Do you… do you honestly expect me to be _casual_ about this?'

She tapped a pen against the notes before her, scanning through a section involving members of the Chinese Mafia. 'Well it would help if you'd try and be direct with me; it makes the process so much faster.

He paused for a moment before summoning a mild laugh beneath his breath. 'My God. I had no idea that Death would be so lacking in empathy. Then again, I guess I should have.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'Charming, I'm sure. Honestly, what it is you people have with always shooting the messenger I'll never know, but I guess you have to target your frustrations onto _somebody_.'

'What are you _talking_ about?' He asked her, in a voice one step below shouting. 'You expect me to be calm?! _Nobody_ would be calm about this—'

'No, I know they wouldn't, but still you're doing a far better job than most. Or you were until about now. I guess you must be used to it. Please, sit down again and stop pacing, would you? You're upsetting the furniture and it tends to bite when it's upset.'

He started suddenly to a standstill, glancing back at the chair he had been sitting on, now shifting uneasily and making small scuffling noises with a non-existent mouth. Slowly, (reluctantly), he sat down again, slumping quite significantly in the process.

'I —the furniture?'

'Bites, yes. We tend to use various inanimate substances to house the more unruly of our spirits. It works amazingly well but we have to let them out sooner or later. You'd be well advised not to annoy them, it only makes our job all the harder.'

He sits in silence for a few more moments. The files stated that he was usually very conversationalist and capable of negotiation, but she wasn't seeing much of that right now. No surprise. So often the files failed to match the man when death was almost literally upon them. She flicked on further, trying not to pay attention to the fact that her chair was once again growling at her.

And then, approximately three pages after the man's introduction to jazz in theatre, the pages started coming out wrong.

She stopped. Thought. Went back a few pages and checked them over. Turned back to the start and checked again hoping the missing ones might have mysteriously re-materialized when she wasn't looking. Of course they hadn't, and the same voice inside her head which frequently told her to panic when she really didn't need to to was rearing its ugly head again. She clutched the files a little tighter in her fingers.

'Um, okay.' She looked up. 'We have a small issue here.'

His eyes narrowed a little just the way she'd expected them, to. 'What do you mean _small_ _issue_?'

'Well,' she coughed slightly, folding her skirt a little to distract her from looking directly at his face. 'That depends entirely on just where you're planning to go from here.'

It's not the kind of question she'd expect anyone to answer instantly but he still manages to take longer to than she expected. 'Well. Whatever is the best option, I would guess. Not as if I'm here by choice anyway.'

'Well, that's good, because as you can probably tell we're having something of a crisis here. Have been for a while, actually, ever since we introduced reincarnation into the natural order.' She snorted. 'Honestly. Solves _so_ many problems with an overcrowded _afterlife_, sure, but did they think about we poor people down here who have to _deal_ with the whole messy process? And it _is_ a messy process I might add. Do you have any idea how complicated it is trying to analyse the precise patterns of death and correlate it into a believable next life?'

He didn't appear to have an answer for that one right away, either. Or a few minutes later.

She sighed, tapping the book carefully as she tried to consider the missing fragments which she knew certainly should have been there. Humans, (short of those experiencing long term comas or amnesia), did _not_ just skip from the age of thirty to the age of forty two with nothing in the middle. 'Add this to the fact that you're _apparently_ missing a rather substantial part of your life…' she looked up at the part-exasperated, part-nervous expression those words brought to his face. 'Relax, I'm talking about your _files_. I'm quite sure you _lived_ your life even if we don't have a record of it. The problem is that without the record of it, we can't prove that you're legal.'

'Legal?'

'You know. Legally dead. '

'Oh…'

She coughed 'Which basically means we have a problem,' she paused. 'Are you _sure_ you don't want a drink, or something? Because you might be here for a while yet and—'

'No,' he said it sharper than he had anything else so far. 'Please, just… let's get on with this. What happens now? You said something's not right, what's the matter with my life?'

'Nothing _now_. You're not _living_ any more. But while you _were_ we apparently… lost track of you for a while. I'd say some time between the years of 1974 and 86; you vanished entirely from our spectrum. Were you doing anything in particular during that time period which you think might've caused your removal?' His mouth opened and closed but no sound came out. 'No, I thought as much. Well, anyway, that leaves you as a no-go for reincarnation. If you'd come here a few weeks ago you would've been okay, but since this whole place is being refurbished to suit the new system we don't actually _have_ anywhere else to send you.'

The pause which followed was perhaps the most uncomfortable one she'd ever experienced in her life she'd often heard tales of things going wrong during after life production but had always been fortunate enough not to get caught up in it herself. Now, lo and behold, she was very much involved and very much not getting out of it until she found a solution.

In short, she was totally, utterly screwed. 'Are you trying to tell me,' he said, evenly. 'That… I have died, lacking information about my life.'

'Basically. Yes.'

'And that means…?'

'That we don't have sufficient information to qualify you exactly for whatever would have been in store for you in the next one. We can't reincarnate you..'

He's not panicking. Not really. Which is just as well because despite all her cover up attempts, she is far closer to doing so than she is allowing him to appear. Losing a couple of weeks wasn't unusual. Or even a month. But twelve whole years of his life wiped out of his spectrum? Whoever the hell had been on record keeping duty that day she was going to have to have a few select words with them sooner or later. What, had they let a young child run around ripping pages out of one of the Books of Fate or something?

She sighed. Paused, tapped her pen far too hard against the notes, and tried to think. He, for his part, said nothing. He just continued to sit (not very still, she had to note, though she figured anyone would be jumpy in his shoes right now). And after a while a usually-not-so-much-helpful-as-dicey voice in her head supplied an option.

'Actually… we do have one alternative.'

He looked up at her, slightly more hopeful than before. 'What would that be?'

Death leaned back slightly in her chair (despite it's reluctance to allow her) and clutched the file against her. 'Without your entire file we don't have the sufficient data for a total reincarnation. It simply wouldn't be safe to offer you one under these circumstances. One other option is that you stick around here. Hang about and hope that we can find your papers while you wait. Alternatively we could just send you back to the world you just came from. You would, of course, not be able to just come back to life as if nothing happened.'

'You mean that I'd be a ghost, right?'

'Hm.'

He breathed out, sharply. 'Thanks, but I think I might pass on that one.'

'No surprise there. The other option is you wait in this room, but that probably won't go down well with my superiors – and there are many, many superiors, by the way, believe me. Then again,' she raised an eyebrow, smiling. 'I think you'd make a _very_ interesting chair. But since the look on your face suggests you also don't fancy _that_ much, there's still the third option…' she paused dramatically.

'Yes? What _is_ it?'

'We can take a guess,' she said.

He blinked at her, letting these words slowly process. The usually-not-so-much-helpful-as-dicey voice in her head sniggered uncontrollably and she forced herself to ignore it. 'We… take a guess?' what do you mean, we—'

'I mean we just open up some universes where other versions of yourself have recently deceased,' she said evenly, 'let you take a look at them, and then, you pick one. Easy as. Then you just hop through and continue to live out the life of the _you_ in that universe as if nothing ever happened. We can't do anything about the life you lost, you understand, but we should be able to find a suitable substitute.'

'So… So I would just pick up exactly where he left it? Continue living in that… universe?'

'Isn't that like I said? You seem like a risk taker to me, not that _that_ took much working out. And you won't be entirely without options: for example, choose the right world and you lay yourself open for a completely different upbringing and therefore a completely different life, which could turn you into a totally different person. The possibilities are endless. You could be back jumping off buildings this time tomorrow, if you really wanted and you picked the right kind of world. I'm fairly sure you're not the only you out there who enjoyed jumping off buildings.'

'It's a living, or at least it _was_, presuming this is real and I'm not just good at convincing myself things are real when I'm dreaming them,' he shrugged.

…Was that a joke?

He shook his head, before she had time to contemplate an answer. 'Perhaps… not this time. Not the same way as before. This time…' He paused. She waited. Eternally patient, just as her job description stated. 'Could you let me change a few things? Maybe let me take different _kinds_ of risks?'

'Uh…huh,' she said slowly, not really seeing at all. But then, she'd had strange ones like this before, so she felt fairly confident she just had to deal with this the way she had all those before him. 'Care to be a little more specific, there? Only I'm having trouble differentiating between exactly what _qualifies_ as _risky_ for you.'

'I can't explain it. I've never been _dead_ before, it's not like I was expecting to have to say this.'

'You've got that one right,' she muttered, dryly. 'Anyway. Specifics?'

His eyebrows raised again, more in an action of thought, this time, than surprise. 'I want to change my reasoning.'

'Reasoning?'

'Behind my actions.'

'Yeah, I understand that bit. You make movies. Films. It's all about the adrenaline and pushing yourself to something higher than you did the last time. Surpassing your limits.' _Which is exactly how so many other people end up here prematurely every day_, her brain helpfully suggested as an afterthought. She somehow refrained from saying it aloud.

'It's more than that,' he says, and she got the distinct impression that if she tried to probe any deeper she'd meet nothing but brick walls and glass windows. Personal Files never seemed to go quite that deep into people's psyches for her to get a grasp of them but then again, it was hardly her job. It seemed, then, that this man's mysteries would remain his own. 'But there are other reasons that I don't know, aren't there? I want to understand those reasons. No jumping off of buildings just…'

'…For the sake of jumping off of buildings?' She guessed. He nodded. 'Something tells me you still want to _jump_, though.'

He nodded slightly. Barely a downwards twitch of the head. Uncharacteristic, she could tell, from what little information she could gleam about his personality. Then again, how many people would ever be prepared for this?

This time, when she smiled, the sympathy was more genuine than she'd expected it to be. A part of her wanted to ask who he was thinking about. Maybe the woman who's name was on his personal stat sheet, or maybe the action he was cutting into the very second it killed him. Completing the stunt in his head long after it was over, along with any chance of repeating it.

She lowered the pad slightly, to peer at him over the brim. 'Interesting. I don't understand that. You're still taking exactly the _same_ risk; you're merely changing your _reason_ for that risk.'

'I need a _different_ reason. One that isn't so much my own,'

It looked like this was something he'd never considered before, and she smiled a little, softly. 'It's very curious, the strange things that death makes you think of, isn't it?'

'You could say that…'

* * *

It took a grand total of fifteen minutes. 

Which was, in short, very surprising. This guy had turned up an awful lot in the Alternate Universes whirlpool and when she typed in his data, no less than fifty individual doors had popped up in the Curtain Screen. The screen itself was a large, black board within which drifted the doorways. Like icons on an out of date computer.

'Well. I guess that means we can take a few of these out.' She pressed a lever and the number of doors drifting in the darkness before them lessened somewhat as several popped out of existence, like vanishing bubbles. 'That narrows us down to approximately fifty… I was kind of hoping you could get this done some time today, though. You realise you're not the only guy we have to service in this place?'

'Well… You can't rush these things, right?' he said, evenly. 'When you rush you make mistakes. People get hurt, and important paperwork tends to go missing.'

That one, she analysed, briefly, was _definitely_ a joke. 'Oh, very funny. Can't you just do an eeny-meeny-miney-mo, or something?

'There!' he said, suddenly. It half snapped her out of a stupor, actually and the doors in the frame before them shifted uneasily as she jolted the controls without meaning to. 'I think… go back one.'

She draws the strings and pulls the treaded doors to and fro on their hangers, swinging the last doorway back into position and holding in there.

'…This one. This one is familiar.'

She leaned forwards over the wooden control panel. 'Do you think that someone in that world might also have existed in your own?'

'Not… exactly. But…'

He didn't finish the sentence, just kept on looking, and as she joined him, she started to catch hold of images in her mind, glaring at her through the open doorway. Burning skies, dragons and bright flashes of colour. Animals and stars, an old man, the rattle of gunfire and a girl with bright, impish brown eyes grinning fit to burst. It was the girl who attracted her attention the most as apparently, she did his.

'So… you have sentimental attachment here, without ever having seen them before,' she tapped her bottom lip thoughtfully. That means something. Usually… Maybe.' Okay, so in actual fact she didn't have a clue. 'You never had children,' she asked him, thoughtfully. 'Did you?'

He didn't answer. But he did continue staring into the same whirlpool. 'You're going with this one, then?' she asked, though really she knew it had already been decided.

He stepped back a little and nodded away whatever remained of his uncertainty. 'What else is there?' he sighed. 'I do not much like the idea of being a piece of your furniture, anyway.'

She smiled slightly, pressing some buttons to make the light around the other doorways begins to dim and clear them from view, leaving this one as the focus. 'Glad we've come to an arrangement.'

'There's one thing I'd like to talk to you about, though.'

She looked up from the panel. 'Yes?'

'My wife.'

'What? Oh. Yes. I'm sorry about that.'

He shook his head as if to say that he knew she wasn't honestly all that sorry but he understood it was her nature and nothing she could help. How he had such a grasp of her character after such a short amount of time, she had no idea. 'You know how they say that you're supposed to think of the strangest things just one moment before your death. Silly things. Like whether or not you fed the cat, or whether you forgot your wallet?'

'Yes, I've heard that one. It doesn't turn out to be true in most instances.'

'It isn't in mine, either,' he said. 'I was thinking about her. And the fact that I wasn't going…'

'…To get the chance to tell her what you wanted to,' Death finished, quietly.

'Let me guess: you hear that one a lot?'

She allowed herself the sad tweak of a smile. 'Not as often as you think.'

'Will I ever see her again?' He asked urgently. 'Will she –she won't…?'

'Tell you what,' Death murmured. 'I'm fairly sure she'll pass through here at some point. When she does, I'll try and _coax_ her gently in that particular direction.'

It wasn't much of a promise really. Eternity was a very long time and any number of things could happen in the process. She might not even be on duty that day, but he wasn't going to know that, and he wouldn't remember her anyway so it hardly really mattered. He nodded, slowly. 'Thank you.'

'Don't mention it. Now, you'd better get moving. I can't keep that doorway open forever, Jackie.' She pressed another button, allowing the door to swing just that little big wider and allow him the first step forwards while simultaneously crossing the fingers of her other hand behind her and praying nothing backfired. That he would enter the room she had no doubt of. He was, after all, a man who liked to take risks.

So she _was_ the slightest bit surprised when he hesitated, only one short step away from the doorway.

'You know, actually, that's… not my name.'

'Hm?' she looked down. Surely his real name couldn't be missing from this damned filing system too? 'It's not?'

'I… well, it is. Kind of, but… I should probably use my birth name?' He directed this at her, as if it was some kind of question. Death merely shrugged. After all, it wasn't her decision. 'Not my western name. Chan Kong Sang.'There was an odd kind of certainty in his voice as he said that, she couldn't help but notice. As if his name were some kind of complex puzzle he'd only just worked out the answer too.

'_So that is your name, then_,' the surprisingly (she continued to find it surprising, no matter how long she had worked here) flippant voice muttered from within the door that now stood in front of him. The voice took him somewhat by surprise. '_Chan Kong Sang_? _So then, you're definitely _not_ Jackie Chan, born in Hong Kong, though raised in the US since the age of twelve, current age thirty-two, single, trained archaeologist._'

'…Um.' He blinked repeatedly, his answer to the puzzle having apparently just been broken right back into its original pieces. 'No?'

Death tried her hardest not to snigger.

'_Well, you are _now.'

Two blinks later and the man who leapt from buildings was gone, as was the doorway which had taken him to wherever. Death let out a final breath. 'Heh. What do you know, he _actually_ did it. So much for a lack of willing participants.'

* * *

So comfortable was she with the unexpected silence that followed, that she completely forgot the fact that anything even close to quiet in this place was probably just some kind of harbinger before another storm hit. Therefore, when the phone started ringing and woke her rather abruptly out of a daydream (or possibly a real dream, it was always somewhat difficult to tell), it took her no less than twenty seconds to actually move to answer it. 

'Ngh. Hello, Premature Burial department, Harbringer Number Twenty Seven speaking, which service do you re—'

'…'

'What? Oh. No, I don't think so… I just sent the last one though. Yeah, that one. The one with something like fifty pages of paperwork. You need to check that out; by the way, I'm, fairly certain he was missing a few, not that his past files weren't already extensive enough as it is..'

'…'

'Yeah, we did. In the end I just had to go for the Rerouting system and send him into an Alternate. It was that or purgatory, after all. He should be arriving just about the second that the temple falls on the original guy.'

'…?'

'Well I don't know, do I? _He_ picked the universe.'

'…'

'What?'

'…?!'

The next pause lasted for quite a long time before she eventually found it in her to speak again. 'Uh. No. No, actually I don't think I _did_ tell him about the memory clause.'

'…'

'What do you mean "_I was supposed to tell him_ _"under threat of my own death if I forget"? _I _am_ a Death, you fool. _I'm_ the only one who gets to make the stupid rules like that!_ Oh_, for goodness sakes. Anyway, we only installed the system this morning, it's new.'

'…_!!!'_

'…What? He was a Guinea Pig! _You_ were the one saying that we needed a—'

'…_**!!!!!'**_

'Oh, _fine_, don't get so hammed up about it. It's not _that_ big a problem. I mean he's not going to remember he was _here_ now, anyway. Plus, his files had a big enough gap in it for people not to notice his absence. Besides, maybe he'll remember some things about why he chose to go there in the first place anyway, is it really that important?.'

'…!...'

'Well, I don't know. Maybe…' she hesitated. 'Maybe he'll remember why he's _there_ and what he's supposed to _do_. The purpose of his existence and all the rest of that over-highly structured mortal stuff. You know how often it works that way with the reincarnates; they always remember _something_ or other, eventually.'

…'

Well yeah, okay, so this isn't _exactly_ a reincarnate but…'

'…'

'No.'

'…'

'Yes, he'll be fine.'

'…'

'I'm certain. Leave the man _alone_ already; he's got buildings to go and jump off.'

'…'

'Yeah, I know that's what he was doing in the _last_ life, what about it?'

'…'

'No, he wanted to do it for a different reason this time.'

'…'

'What did I do? I…

'I guess you could say that I just… gave him a new duty.'

'…?'

'Yeah, you know. A _duty_. I narrowed down his world pool selection considerably before I even let him in there. Heck, with a file like _his_, we'd have been looking into different galaxies all day if I hadn't lessened the field a little. The rest of it is your job. _My_ work stops once the doorway opens, remember?'

'…'

'No, I _didn't_. Come now, you know me better than that, since when do I take risks with…'

'…'

'Look, I did _not_ get attached to the guy in the fourteen minutes and twelve seconds we were in the same room. _Or_ in the three hours _before_ that while I was reading his papers. I _happen_ to think he's a bit of a lunatic. I mean, _building_s. He made a _living_ by jumping off of _twenty story-high buildings_! Surely wherever he's going to now _can't_ be anymore dangerous than that.'

'…?'

'What? Well, _yes_, it _was_ a very chi-enhanced universe he selected, now that you mention it. Why do you ask?'

'………'

'…Oh. Right. And this happens often?'

'…'

'…Okay.'

'…?'

'No! No, it's not a problem, I mean. He wanted a different motivation for risking his life on a daily basis. I guess… I guess that doing it to save the world from super powered talismans and demonic spirits is as good a motivation as any.'

'…'

'Hm. Yeah. Well, we all need more heroes in the universe, now, don't we? No matter _which_ universe we come from.'

Fin.

* * *

**So. That's it. The closest I will ever come to writing a Real Person Fic. R****eview, maybe?**


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